At Our Wits' End, page 9
58 Payling, S.J. (1992) Social mobility, demographic change, and landed society in late medieval England, Economic History Review, 45, pp. 51–73.
59 Stone, L. (1966) Social mobility in England, 1500–1700, Past and Present, 33, pp. 16–55, p. 21.
60 Stone, L. & Stone, J.C.F. (1986) An Open Elite? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
61 Fletcher, S. (2009) Cardinal Wolsey: A Life in Renaissance Europe, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
62 Borman, T. (2015) Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant, New York: Grove/Atlantic.
63 Kaelble, H. (1985) Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Leamington Spa: Berg, p. 12.
64 Ho, P. (1959) Aspects of social mobility in China, 1368–1911, Comparative Studies in Sociology & History, 1, pp. 330–359.
65 Herrnstein, R. & Murray, C. (1994) The Bell Curve, New York: Free Press.
66 Dill, S. (1898) Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, London: Macmillan.
67 Coleman, D. & Salt, J. (1992) The British Population, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Four
Is there Evidence that Intelligence was Increasing Up to the Industrial Revolution?
Clearly, there were no IQ tests in pre-industrial England allowing us to track the rise of IQ and even had there been, as we will see in Chapter Eight, they might not have been that helpful. Gregory Clark, though he does not explicitly talk about intelligence, has amassed very good evidence that intelligence was nonetheless continuously increasing in the pre-industrial era in A Farwell to Alms.[1] He has done this by gathering proxies for intelligence and showing that, across history, they seem to change in precisely the direction that would be predicted if intelligence was indeed going up. These proxies are interest rates, literacy, numeracy, and judicial violence.
Interest Rates
Interest rates can be regarded as a marker of intelligence because they measure time preference. We have already seen that ‘time preference’ is associated with intelligence. More intelligent people are more focused on the future than are less intelligent people. As such, a smaller reward, given relatively further into the future, is sufficient to persuade a more intelligent person to postpone immediate gratification. It follows from this that if you asked a less intelligent person to lend you some money, they would be profoundly concerned about the immediate consequence of this, which would be them having slightly less money here and now. In order to persuade them to lend you the money, you would have to offset this by allowing them to charge you a very high level of interest. If they could only charge you a low level of interest then, from their perspective, the reward of the low level of interest would be too small, relative to the length of time they would have to wait for it and so be ungratified, to matter. It would be outweighed by the fact that they would be postponing gratification here and now. In essence, the more intelligent a person is, the less of a return they require on their investment to bother making the investment.
This can also be seen with something as simple as how you spend your money. Viv Nicholson (1936–2015) was moderately famous in the UK and was immortalised in the musical Spend, Spend, Spend! Though seemingly good at art, there is every indication that she was not especially bright. She was raised in extreme poverty in Yorkshire, as the daughter of an unemployed miner. She became pregnant at 16 and had five children, four of whom died as children. However, in 1961, she won £152,319—about £3 million in today’s money—on the football pools. Asked by a tabloid journalist what she would do with the money she replied, ‘Spend! Spend! Spend!’[2] By 1965, she was bankrupt. She simply had no ability to postpone gratification for the sake of the future.
Interest rates, then, are a marker of intelligence. Clark’s research has shown that between 1200 and 1800 in England interest rates significantly fell. Based on land return and rent return, interest rates in the year 1200 were over 10% and, in fact, in 1150 they were around 15%. By 1800, they had fallen to just 5%. Of course, there are all kinds of localised reasons why interest rates might have fallen—and fallen so much—over this period. Our point is simply that it fits with the hypothesis that people were becoming more intelligent—and thus better able to defer gratification. The decline in interest rates can be seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Return on land and on rent charges by decade in England, 1170–2003.[3]
Literacy and Numeracy
Clearly, literacy and numeracy are significant components to intelligence. ‘Linguistic aptitude’ is an important component of intelligence and, so, the more intelligent you are the easier you will find it to learn to read. Intelligence correlates with ‘Intellect’ (see Chapter Five)—being interested in ideas. The more intelligent you are, the higher your intellect will be and thus the more of an incentive you will have to learn to read. As for learning to write, there will be clear benefits to learning to do this in terms of keeping records and accounts and these will become more necessary as society becomes more complex and specialised, which would potentially be a sign of its increasing intelligence. In addition, writing—especially with a quill—is a complex skill involving fine motor skills and patience, both qualities associated with more intelligent people. Furthermore, the wealthy would be more likely to be able to educate their children and those children would be more able to accrue wealth by being educated. It is, therefore, no surprise that Clark found a relationship between literacy and social status in his sample of wills. 94% of the gentry could sign their wills, 88% of merchants, 53% of yeomen, 26% of husbandmen, but only 17% of labourers. So, we would expect literacy to be a proxy for intelligence.
The same would be true of numeracy. More intelligent people would be better at maths and the kind of work they engaged in, such as business, would also necessitate the greater use of mathematics. Undeveloped societies have little use for mathematics. Clark notes that a good marker of numeracy is age awareness. By 1800, most people in Western Europe had a fairly accurate understanding of how old they were. However, this is not the case in illiterate and innumerate societies. In the 4th century AD, a survey indicated that 80% of Roman office holders—highly important people—knew their age. In 18th-century Paris, only 15% of people were of unknown age. In 15th-century Florence, a wealthy city, 32% of people did not know how old they were. In the small town of Corfe Castle in England, most of whose inhabitants were labourers, only 8% did not know their age in 1790. This implies that English labourers around 1800 were as numerate as late Roman office holders.
For literacy, Clark turns to a combination of the percentage of grooms who signed the marriage register when they married or the percentage of witnesses in court cases who could sign depositions. These were traced between 1580 and 1920, in England, and showed a clear upward trend. For example, in 1740 about 60% of English men could sign their names but by 1920 it was close to 100%, gradually increasing, without a blip, from 1780. A similar process can be seen with female literacy and literacy from specific bishoprics in narrower periods. Again, disruptive factors such as the English Civil War, for example, would interfere with the trend—because they would interfere with the education of children—but there is a clear upward trend. Going back to Medieval England, it is clear that literacy was very low, to the extent that being able to read a passage from the Bible in court, which meant you could avoid execution for felony, was known, as mentioned previously, as ‘Benefit of the Clergy’, as it was mainly only the clergy who could read. There is no sign that there were greater rewards for literacy and numeracy in 1800 than in 1500; we simply became more educated. This would reflect us becoming more intelligent. The rise in literacy can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Literacy in England, 1580–1920.[4]
Judicial Violence and Blood Sports
An appetite for violence and cruelty is often a reflection of low intelligence. As we have discussed, the less intelligent are less able to empathise with the feelings of others. Accordingly, we would expect to see a rise in intelligence parallel a decline in barbarity. Although this is difficult to measure, a case can be made that this is precisely what we see. A good example can be seen in the cruelty inflicted on criminals. In Tudor England, the punishment for any felony was death by hanging. In London, in the 17th century these hangings—which were by slow strangulation rather than breaking the neck via a long drop—took place at Tyburn. There would be a party atmosphere along the route via which the condemned were taken to the gallows. Effectively, the event was a kind of fair; a day out for the family.
In the Early Modern Era in England, the punishment for heresy or treason, if you were a woman, was to be burned alive. The punishment for high treason, if you were a man, was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. You would be dragged through the street on a hurdle, hanged, cut down while still alive (though, in practice, you’d usually be allowed to hang until you died), castrated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered. The head and quarters would then be displayed in public until they rotted away. Of course, all the executions took place in public. In 1536, the rebel leader Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace (a huge and very nearly successful uprising against Henry VIII), begged not to be executed in this way so, instead, he was hanged in chains until he died; his body left to decay.[5] And even these kinds of punishments might seem benign compared to some of those enacted around 500 years earlier when the punishment for poaching in the king’s forest was to be blinded and castrated.[6] The same society that deployed these gruesome punishments enjoyed all forms of blood sports, including cock fighting and bear baiting.[7]
Through the course of the 18th and the early 19th century, these kinds of sadistic punishments were abolished in England. The last hanging, drawing, and quartering occurred in 1782. The punishment of being burnt at the stake was abolished in 1789. The gibbeting of executed criminals stopped in 1832. Cock fighting and bear baiting were banned in 1835. Public executions were stopped altogether in 1869. In essence, we became less cruel; less inclined to inflict vengeful and agonising punishment. This can be interpreted in many ways, but one interpretation is increasing intelligence. In addition to the measures discussed by Gregory Clark, there are a number of others which fit with the pattern he observed.
The Size of the Head
Higher intelligence requires a bigger brain. Indeed, brain size tends to weakly correlate, at about 0.2 to 0.3, with IQ score; a relationship that is further evidence of the objectivity of IQ tests.[8] On average, the larger your brain is, the more intelligent you are. Large brains require large skulls and this being so we would expect that the average size of people’s heads would have increased since, for example, the medieval period. A study, by W.P. Rock and his colleagues, has found that this is indeed the case. Comparing a sample of 31 skulls from 13th-century London and 30 skulls that are representative of modern English people, his group found that the dimensions of the cranial vault, which houses the brain, had increased by 10mm.[9]
Democracy and Political Stability
We have already seen that democracy is associated with relatively high intelligence at the level of individuals. Those of low IQ are less likely to vote for democratic parties or sustain democracy at all. This is because democracy involves cooperation, low corruption, trust, and future orientation, all of which are associated to some extent with high intelligence. This being the case, we would expect to observe a process of greater democratisation and political stability as we move towards the 18th century.
Again, there is considerable evidence for this. Medieval England can hardly even be regarded as a functioning state in the modern sense. The king was an absolute monarch, but he had little control outside of London. The provinces were ruled by local warlords—the feudal nobility—whose support for the king was required in order to stay in power. When he lost this support, he would be toppled and even if he wasn’t toppled he would frequently have to put down rebellions led by disloyal warlords. Edward II was murdered in 1327, Richard II was murdered in 1400, Henry VI was removed in 1461 and then again in 1471 after he retook power. He was murdered that time. Edward V was removed by his uncle Richard III and was likely killed in 1483. Richard III died at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and was replaced by Henry VII, a usurper with a tenuous claim to the throne who had to deal with various rebellions. Henry VIII was almost toppled in 1536. His successor was the nine-year-old Edward VI, and his Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, was executed in 1552. Edward VI’s successor, Lady Jane Grey, was removed after nine days and beheaded by her successor, Mary I. Her successor, Elizabeth I, was nearly overthrown in 1588 by Philip II of Spain and also narrowly survived an assassination attempt. The attempt to kill her successor, James I, in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is well known.[10]
However, the country does not start to become more stable after this. Charles I was executed in 1649, after the Civil War. The Interregnum was violently overthrown in 1660 and the ringleaders hanged, drawn, and quartered. James II was removed in 1688, by parliament, and died in exile. But then things begin to change. Although the last serious rebellion was in 1745, throughout the 18th century England develops into a country in which power is held by parliament, not the crown. And the House of Commons is elected by an elite who qualify to vote by virtue of property ownership. The size of the electorate expanded from 1832 onwards and, by 1917, all males of 21 or over could vote. In 1928, the franchise was expanded to include all females aged 21 or over. The country had become more democratic and more politically stable.[11]
Corruption
Again, changes in this marker are difficult to precisely measure, but it is widely accepted by historians that England became much less corrupt, especially from the end of the 18th century. Indeed, the preceding system is generally referred to as the ‘Old Corruption’.[12] Under this system, England was only a meritocracy to a very limited degree. Appointments to lucrative positions were almost entirely a matter of nepotism or people paying to purchase a position from which they hoped to make money. Commissions in the army were purchased, as were church appointments and secular administrative posts. Many of these were sinecures: positions requiring little or no work but which gave the holder financial benefits. Electors voted publicly and were openly bribed and, sometimes, blackmailed. In other words, by modern standards England was extremely corrupt.
This began to change from around the late 18th century onwards, although some historians put the beginning of the change at around 1730. In terms of politics, the 1832 Reform Act abolished ‘rotten boroughs’—constituencies with tiny electorates, which nevertheless had as much influence as big cities in terms of voting in parliament. Pocket boroughs were those controlled by a wealthy noble who would have one of his retainers stand as an MP. He could also control how the electors would vote, because he was their landlord. This could be done through bribery, because voting was by public ballot. The MP would then vote, in parliament, as his patron demanded. The abolition of many rotten boroughs, accordingly, removed many pocket boroughs. Secret ballots were introduced in 1867.[13] Local government was also highly corrupt, with the right to vote restricted to those whom the city government felt they could trust. This was ensured by the fact that you had to be a ‘freeman of the city’ in order to vote and this status would be conferred by the city authorities, often in return for money.[14] This was changed in 1835, so that all rate-payers could vote. The ability to purchase a commission in the army was finally abolished in 1871 and by this time much of the general corruption had ceased.
Murder
Criminality is notoriously difficult to compare across time because there are so many variables involved. The definition of particular crimes changes as does the extent to which they are likely to be reported. Social factors which may increase crime levels—those that cause poverty—will also fluctuate. As such, caution is required when engaging in such comparisons. Nevertheless, quantitatively-minded historians have done this. They found that, in London, the per capita homicide rate in the year 1278 was roughly 13 murders per 100,000 people.[15] Despite the fact that the penalty in England for homicide was hanging all the way up until the 1960s, and despite the fact that there was little significant change in living standards between the 1200s and the 18th century,[16] historians found something which is in line with the theory that we were becoming more intelligent. Based on court records from various cities, we were becoming much less inclined to commit murder. In 1300, there were 23 murders per 100,000 people in England, similar to Brazil in 2012. By 1500, it was 15 murders, placing England on a par with Mexico in the year 2014. By 1600, it was 7 murders, and by 1700 just 5 murders. By 1800, we were down to 3 murders and by 1900 we were down to less than 2. By around 1950, we were down to less than 1 murder. In the UK, the rate is 1 murder per 100,000 as of 2014.[17] The decline in the European murder rate can be seen in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Indicators of homicides per 100,000 of the population in European countries, 14th to 20th centuries, fitted to a third-order polynomial curve.[18]
Many historians have been critical of attempting to trace the homicide rate over time. They question, for example, how likely the crime was to be reported, musing on issues of cultural difference. But, if anything, cultural differences would simply downplay the Medieval and Early Modern murder rate because the definition of murder was narrower—killing somebody in a duel, for example, was not ‘murder’ in Medieval England[19]—and, as the society was more corrupt and the state’s power more limited, we can easily see how this would lead to under-reporting. Also, many other studies have shown the same phenomenon. In Kent, indictment for murder fell ten-fold between 1560 and 1985. Studies in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy reveal the same ‘civilising’ process.[20] The simplest explanation for this civilising process—especially when there was very little change in living standards—is that the average intelligence of European society was increasing every generation. The decline in homicides aggregated from data from England, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy can be seen in Figure 4.
